


Won't You Sip On This Here

by madeinessos



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, F/F, Hook-Up, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 22:03:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21083798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Minn-Erva and an Asgardian walk into a pub. Except that Minn-Erva has never been in a pub in Lower Hala, and the Asgardian will not admit that she is Asgardian.





	Won't You Sip On This Here

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Tinashe's "Thug Cry."

Minn-Erva might have failed to notice the Asgardian had she not made it a habit to check out the corners first. The nooks and niches. The alcoves, the crannies, the creases. Most times they held nothing but the most mundane. Other times, though, they cradled the most interesting, either of the pleasant variety or the dangerous. As a Starforce sniper Minn-Erva loved it best when she was the only dangerous sort lurking in corners at any given time.

As it was, she first saw the Asgardian in a corner of a pub in Lower Hala.

Trains were humming past the dingy windows. The neon sign behind the Asgardian, advertising heartpeppers stuffed with yam and egg, limned her in deep gold. It cast a dull gleam on her facial markings, on her arm bands, on the graceful line of her body slanted against a rickety table. Smoke floated about her, wreathing her with clouds of fragrant grey and crusty pink, and from time to time the Asgardian would close her eyes.

Minn-Erva paused.

Well.

Why not.

The chattering, laughing crowd had ignored her when she entered. In her Starforce uniform they would have nodded respectfully, some with quiet awe, and the barwoman would have given her a drink on the house. In the company of her mother there would have been a scramble to offer a governor of the Kree Empire all the drinks and all the chairs in the establishment. But they paid no mind to a Kree woman in a purple coat and a purple hat, which was also what they had done last year when Minn-Erva had still been a trainee, and frankly, she preferred it this way. She was free to ramble through the streets of Hala in a happy little bubble, and she was free to wend her way through this crowded pub and to walk past the Asgardian’s table. A casual swing of Minn-Erva’s right arm. A buzz against her wrist. She pulled back her sleeve, saw her device confirm her hunch via Beings and Creatures Scanner despite the facial markings. She ordered a hot leafy drink, black and sweet-smelling. Then she turned back and stopped in front of the rickety little table.

The first ever Asgardian that Minn-Erva had met.

And in the flesh, no less. Excitement thrummed just beneath her skin.

The first ever Asgardian that Minn-Erva had met seemed perfectly content to ignore her, eyes still shut, chin on palm, fingers loose around a massive tankard.

In a low voice Minn-Erva said, “From Asgard?”

“Sakaar,” said the Asgardian, before opening her eyes. Her gaze was languid – edged with something else. Something else mildly unsettling. She did not lift her chin from her palm. “Why?”

It was jarring.

Minn-Erva resisted the urge to draw back.

But no need for this fuss, really, no need at all. No need to step back. She was being ridiculous. So the Asgardian had looked marvellous from a distance, so what? So she had seemed to have an inexplicable glimmer of something from a distance, something like radiance glimpsed through the clouds, but so what? Maybe that was just the neon sign, and the plumes of smoke, and the soupy evening laughter mingling with strains of a flute and the hum of trains, and Minn-Erva spending much of the day in a happy private bubble.

The Asgardian raised her brows. “You look lost,” she said. “You’re Kree yourself, aren’t you? Sit down.”

Minn-Erva paused again.

That something else, languid and something else, tinged not only the Asgardian’s gaze but also her voice. Something that lolled in the heartbeat separating coldness and dullness.

“Yes, I am Kree,” said Minn-Erva. She carefully put her hot leafy on the table and sat down, adding, “And I am not lost.”

The Asgardian said nothing. She just raised her tankard to her lips, eyes still on Minn-Erva.

This was encouraging, if a little baffling. Minn-Erva was used to clear, crisp orders. Yes or no. Now or never. This shapeless silence was new. Fresh. Minn-Erva realised that she could elaborate, she could change the subject, she could lie, she could just lapse into silence. Her excitement returned, a tingling at her fingertips.

And this was the first Asgardian that she had ever met.

So Minn-Erva chose to elaborate with the truth.

“I have just never been to Lower Hala that much,” she admitted. “I grew up with sunshine. Gardens. The canopies we have, they are as bright as jewels in sun and in rain both. And fresh air. I grew up with fresh air, too.”

“And family antiques of some kind,” said the Asgardian. A corner of her lips tipped up. She glanced at the ring on Minn-Erva’s forefinger. “Eagle-shaped. I’ve met your grandmother. Haj-Arra.”

Minn-Erva blinked. She blinked again. Otherwise she thought she did a rather good job at blandness. At not betraying surprise, amongst other things. “She was my great-grandmother.”

“Was.”

“She joined The Collective rather young. Aged ninety-six. Before her time, really. Nova skirmish.”

The Asgardian nodded. “I see.”

Minn-Erva didn’t. Her great-grandmother had known this Asgardian, for Hala’s sake. “How did you know who I am?”

“Oh I didn’t. I don’t know your name.”

“Minn-Erva.”

“All right,” the Asgardian said, and nothing else. Her lips were still curled in a corner. She’d lifted up her chin from her palm, though, and her gaze might still be languid but somehow it was less cold, less dulled.

“How?” pressed Minn-Erva.

“Jewel-bright was how Haj-Arra put it.” That side of the Asgardian’s lips curled deeper, lovelier. “Plus the eagle. She was so proud of that eagle. And she went on forever about the sunshine and the gardens and the beautiful wide windows in her houses in Hala and in a couple of Imperial Kree planets and it all sounded like –” The Asgardian paused. Swallowed thickly. “Like paradise or something.”

“Like home,” agreed Minn-Erva.

The Asgardian took a gulp from her tankard and abruptly stood up. “Right. Nice talk.”

Minn-Erva was startled. “What?”

The Asgardian clapped Minn-Erva on the shoulder, the force of it obviously belatedly restrained, or perhaps that was just the massive tankard, or the languidness, because Minn-Erva had learned from the academy that Asgardians were another level of strong and were incredibly hard to knock down and even more difficult to knock out.

“What?” she repeated, and clutched the hand on her shoulder.

The Asgardian pulled her hand away and drew back. “Your drink’s getting cold,” she told Minn-Erva, eyebrows raised, lips a wry twist. “I’ll see you around, all right?”

*

Minn-Erva sat down, uninvited, on the same chair eight months later. Relief was burbling in her chest that she was sorely tempted to start grinning. To start laughing. Like a lunatic. “I thought I’d never see you again,” Minn-Erva said, her tone level.

The Asgardian lowered her tankard. “What happened to you?”

Minn-Erva gestured at the bruises on her eyes and cheek. “My commander. I am the newest on the team.” And the best, but she kept that fact to herself. “We were sparring before I came here.”

“A regular now, are we.” The Asgardian gulped from her tankard. She was just getting started on this one, a frothy burgundy liquid.

“Yes,” said Minn-Erva crisply. “In fact I have familiarised myself with Lower Hala. I love the trains. I love the shops along the platform. And the lamps, there are plenty of lamps here. I also wondered, are you a regular here?”

“The Kree always have lots of prisoners,” said the Asgardian with a sardonic lift of her eyebrows, “and I’m a scrapper. So, yes, I come here occasionally.”

A scrapper. Minn-Erva grasped that detail.

And then they were silent.

They were silent for some moments. Minn-Erva sipped her hot leafy and watched the Asgardian. The Asgardian nursed her tankard, poked at a heartpepper carved open and the grilled egg and cubes of buttered yam inside. She also didn’t seem to mind Minn-Erva watching her because sometimes she’d watch back. Languidly blinking. Crunching on a piece of yellow heartpepper. The Asgardian skimmed over Minn-Erva, her dark gaze heavily-lidded, cool, and brazen.

At one point the Asgardian said, “You really wandered around this place. Didn’t you. This Lower Hala.”

“I did.” Minn-Erva was puzzled. “I said I did. That means I have done it.”

That made the Asgardian smile.

Time slowed down. The neon lights twinkled through the clouds of smoke. The Asgardian’s eyes were liquid-bright and her lips were so full of warmth that it made her cheekbones bloom and Minn-Erva was seized with the giddy urge to reach out and trace those lips with her fingers, to find out how heartpeppers tasted on those lips. Would the burgundy liquid taste as frothy as it looked if licked from the Asgardian’s lips? Minn-Erva wanted to know.

“You remind me of myself when I was your age.” Then the Asgardian huffed, still smiling, and added: “Well, a bit. I wasn’t such a solemn little thing.”

Minn-Erva snorted. She did not protest it. She also wondered if her steel goblet would break if she squeezed it any tighter. Her fingertips were tingling, and outside the window the trains kept speeding anywhere.

“What is your name? You never told me your name,” Minn-Erva said, even as she thought, _I never asked._

The Asgardian’s smile dimmed.

No.

The Asgardian looked at her tankard. She raised it to her lips. Drank long and deep.

A sudden coldness at Minn-Erva’s fingertips, she reached over the table and settled her hand half on top of the Asgardian’s. Not holding it, but only as a weight of possibility. The Asgardian might hold back, slip away, or do nothing at all. Not a yes or no. Not a now or never. Minn-Erva sensed that the Asgardian needed that.

The Asgardian did not move her hand.

Minn-Erva said, “My mother, she is unimpressed with my commander. He is from Lower Hala, you see. Look at the pallor of his skin, my mother once said, it is apparent to all that his family have been in Lower Hala since the dawn of the universe. They must have lost a Kree tribal war before the age of the empire. Maman insists on sparring with me whenever she visits from Hafa. She does not believe he can be a good enough teacher for me. But this Starforce commander is very good, very technical. He tells me that I have spent more time on my mother’s imperial planet of Hafa than on Lower Hala itself and is that what ‘For the good of all Kree’ means?” Minn-Erva allowed herself a small smile. She took a sip of her hot leafy. The Asgardian was listening intently, hand still half under hers. Minn-Erva did not add that that time she had done extremely well, killing the leader of a Skrull cell in her first mission, the Supreme Intelligence had rewarded her by sparring with her and beating her, although Minn-Erva hadn’t minded it, with Maman’s eagle brooch swimming in her vision – no Kree ever divulged what form the Intelligence took with them.

“My boss is insane,” the Asgardian put in. Then, smiling: “Is that the longest you’ve spoken this day?”

It was the same radiant smile from eight months ago. Minn-Erva drank it in. She said, “This week, actually.”

The Asgardian laughed. Her hand held on to Minn-Erva even as she said, “So why are you wasting your time with me?”

“You do not annoy me.” And that was the truth. Minn-Erva added in brisk tones, “I will take a walk. There was one lamp which caught my eye and I want to buy it.”

*

The lamp had stars painted on it. It glowed white and gold. It was the only light on in the Asgardian’s hostel room.

Slowly, slowly, Minn-Erva mouthed the bare skin low on the Asgardian’s belly. She trapped each jump of muscle between her lips, sucked on it, laved on it. Lent the taste of burgundy and cunt to it.

The Asgardian sighed in pleasure. “I want it hard, all right?”

“I want it rough.” Minn-Erva slid her hands from the Asgardian’s hips to the Asgardian’s breasts. Kneaded. Pinched, twisted. She kept her hands well away from the Asgardian’s sopping folds.

“That, too.”

Perfect.

Minn-Erva raised herself on her knees, lifted the Asgardian’s leg, and pressed an open-mouthed kiss on the inside of the Asgardian’s thigh. “In a minute,” Minn-Erva said, sucking and biting and lapping up, up, up, smiling at the Asgardian’s breathy laughter.

*

The Asgardian yanked Minn-Erva’s hair deliciously. She pulled until Minn-Erva’s scalp stung, and kept pulling. She clamped her thighs around Minn-Erva’s head, thrashed her hips, dug bruises on Minn-Erva’s hips and thighs when Minn-Erva rode her face, flipped them easily on the bed with Minn-Erva’s thighs still quaking on her shoulders. But the Asgardian’s fingers, afterwards, were gentle as they ran through Minn-Erva’s damp hair. They had tossed the sweaty sheets on the floor. Minn-Erva woke up with a numb arm from their tangled limbs. The lamp was still on.

*

“We don’t have the same sun,” the Asgardian told Minn-Erva.

And that was true enough. They had different solar systems. Asgard was far enough to be safely admired by Hala. Sakaar was even farther.

They did not see each other for eight months, for eight years after that, for eighty-eight months after that, and after that, for eight hundred days. When they did meet it was because the Asgardian had come to haggle for prisoners. When they did meet it was always in Lower Hala, with its shadows, its neon lights and lamps, its strains of flute music. Although Minn-Erva had taken to watching the Asgardian stride on the avenue to the Imperial Detention Tower in Upper Hala. Sunshine suited her. The Asgardian's wavy black hair was gathered first at the middle of the back of her head and then at her nape. The tips of it brushed her waist. It slightly swung with every confident roll of her hips, bordering on an understated swagger. When they did meet they fucked loud and rough, the Asgardian laughing, Minn-Erva full of light. When they did meet their silences were allowed to breathe. Minn-Erva could withdraw to her insular silences, unperturbed, and the Asgardian was content to brood. They could be alone together. They would sit on the Asgardian’s tiny balcony in the guesthouse in Lower Hala, side by side, silent, watching the trains gleaming in the distance. Starforce might be gruelling and Maman might be exacting, but from time to time Minn-Erva would be free to take a sip of something that was hers alone, should she choose to. It was enough. It was what all Minn-Erva wanted for now.

“What if Hala ran out of prisoners?” Minn-Erva said one evening. She removed the lid of her tall enamel cup. “What are you drinking?”

“Trust me, it won’t. The universe isn’t that kind.”

Minn-Erva glanced away. She twisted on her chair and stretched her arm to turn on her painted lamp. It was on the floor, brushing the threshold to the balcony.

The Asgardian peered at her glass bottle inquisitively, then angled it towards Minn-Erva. A sip. Minn-Erva shook her head. The Asgardian dipped a finger into the drink and Minn-Erva wrapped her lips around it. Less than a sip, but strong enough.

“You said you love your standing in your team,” the Asgardian said. Her eyes were soft in the half-light. “You should keep that up.”

Minn-Erva did not ask the Asgardian if she had ever worked with a team because after almost a decade in Starforce, Minn-Erva had imbibed the nuances to know that the Asgardian had indeed worked with a team. And it was a wound. The same way how Minn-Erva knew not to press for her name or for the fact that she was Asgardian. According to the guesthouse she was Scrapper 142 and she never returned greetings and she always seemed thirsty, and that was enough. Sometimes Minn-Erva wondered what the Asgardian had glimpsed on her. What else besides a little of herself when she was Minn-Erva’s age?

And Minn-Erva did intend to excel in the Starforce. She always said what she meant. And she perfectly understood what the Asgardian was trying to say with kindness.

“Of course I intend to,” she said briskly.

That made the Asgardian smile again. Her rare smile, warm and lovely.

Minn-Erva leaned back against the Asgardian's shoulder and took a sip of hot leafy.

_ **fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> You're welcome to suggest if I should edit or add tags. :D


End file.
